Green

Thanks once again to our loyal TMCnet readers. Because of you, TMCnet has broken more online records. In January of 2008 TMCnet experienced 38,368,961 page views (meaning total number of web pages viewed on TMCnet in January alone.

The total number of unique visitors on our site in January was 2,446,403 which is not an all time record but it is higher than recent months. Average Visit Length per person on TMCnet in January was 28 minutes and 59 seconds this past month.

As you may know, Mobile World Congress kicks off this week and to get the ball rolling the event has put out some of the key terms you will be hearing more about this week. I have posted them here with their definitions in case you need to brush up on your acronyms.

Here are some of the happenings this week at ITEXPO. My team is already down in Miami, making sure the new Mustang convertible is prepped and ready for the raffle Friday. I wish you luck in winning the car and either way you will end up with something of value -- a 3-day IP communications education available nowhere else.

I hope everyone has a safe trip down to Internet Telephony Conference & Expo. The registration numbers are trending nicely above estimates and we expect a stellar event. As always, we have done our absolute best to assemble the most knowledgeable speakers and diverse exhibitors and this show will provide the best IP communications education ever.

As a side benefit I figured I should remind you that flights to Miami are still very cheap and the weather in the US is getting colder. Here is a map of the current temps...

Texas would rank seventh in the world in carbon emissions if it were its own country, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Texas, the second most populous state, behind California, has 23.5 million people and more than 20 million registered vehicles, about one in four of them a pickup truck. California has a population of 36.5 million and 33 million registered vehicles.

Recently I was fortunate enough to be able to interview a number of thought leaders and others who have given me their perspectives on the communications market, the future, the entry of Google, Apple and Microsoft into the space and much more.

Here are some of the more interesting interviews for your reading pleasure... I really think we can get a healthy read on where communications will be headed in 2008 by absorbing some of these comments.

It has been a pretty big news day so far this early morning. Intel perhaps is responsible for the biggest portion of today's market movement as last night they announced earnings which were not all that bad but the stock got slammed anyway. I am a shareholder of Intel as a point of disclosure.

Ending a six-month long saga many thought was over, Oracle will be buying BEA Systems for 8.5 billion dollars in an all-cash deal. You may recall this summer that the two companies were negotiating over this sale with BEA rejecting an earlier offer from the database and software giant.

The Wall Street Journal has good financial analysis of Synchronoss Technology, the company behind the iPhone activation.

On November 6, 2007 I had a post (see bottom of post for chart) where I showed how TMC compares with other IP Communications sites. I did this by pulling numbers from Quantcast, a web service which tracks web traffic worldwide but whose numbers quoted here equal the unique United States visitors each month.

So a Quantcast ranking of 3,000 means that you have 100 unique visitors each day per month (approximately 30 days). So 100 x 30 = 3,000. Again -- these are US numbers only.

In November of last year, TMCnet attracted just over 711,000 US unique visitors per month according to Quantcast.

Now, just two months later, our Quantcast ranking is 870,019, an increase of 159,019.

Samsung has its hands in just so many things and subsequently it is worth sitting back and taking notice when the company is accused of setting up a slush fund and engaging in bribery.

Samsung Group is easily South Korea’s leading conglomerate. The company has 58 subsidiaries and accounts for over 20 percent of the country’s exports. Samsung Group’s assets are valued at more than $280.8 billion and its exports were worth $66.3 billion last year.

Scandals are not considered new to such huge South Korean industrial groups as Samsung. These conglomerates have regularly been accused of wielding their economic power to influence government decisions, as well as using shading dealings between subsidiaries to help controlling families to evade taxes and transfer wealth to heirs.